All throughout the 1980s Michael Radford was an acclaimed director of such films as 1984 and White Mischief. But it wasnt until the multi-Oscar nominated film Il Postino that he truly began to get what he deserved. Recently he has directed what many are considering the best Shakespeare to film adaptation, The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons.

Daniel Robert Epstein: I was surprised you kept so close to the original play of Merchant of Venice.

Michael Radford: Its difficult not to. When you take on Shakespeare thats what you take on but I did cut an hour from the play. Secondly I wrote a prologue and an epilogue so people could get into the movie and identify with the characters. Then I cinematized it. Youre not going to change the story for the characters. Dancing at the Blue Iguana was an improv movie so this is entirely different.

DRE: Did any of the actors try to deviate from the script?

MR: You cant change the lines. I remember directing an American method actor who was supposed to speak a Pablo Neruda poem and he kept on improvising so I said, that isnt appropriate. You cant just improv your way through it because this is a story written by someone. For Merchant of Venice, it did help that we did a lot of rehearsal for this and the more time you give an actor the more you get into the role. These guys really needed that because Shakespeare helps you find out your technique.

DRE: Pacino is a pretty big fan of this play. Did he come in and already have ideas of how he wanted Shylock to be or was it a collaboration?

MR: No one comes in without ideas. But we discussed quite a lot and then we rehearsed for a month before we actually shot anything. We really had to hit the ground running because we had to shoot it in seven weeks so during that rehearsal period its my job to have an overall view of the thing. I cant have one actor going one direction and the rest of the cast going in another. You make sure everyone is on the same wavelength. As far as working with movie stars like Jeremy Irons or Al Pacino, their reputations are at stake and they have to be able to trust you so you have to sort of earn their trust by showing them you know what you want. Once that happens you have a fantastic collaboration. Guys like Al and Jeremy are like violins, you play them and you get a really good tune.

DRE: Is there something you did to ensure the film would not be anti-Semitic?

MR: I made it very clear that this play was set in the 16th century. The anti-Semitism in the play is not really relevant to today because its about things that dont exist anymore. The lending of money with interest is not a problem anymore because everyone lends money with interest. I never really understood why the play is considered to be anti-Semitic because the speech Hath not a Jew eyes, is one of the great pleas for humanity. Thats not an anti-Semite writing. Hes placed us in a context where Christians and Jews were at each others throats, where two countries didnt understand each other and where certain things happened that are dramatically striking. What I love about the play is that its about flawed humanity. Shylock has every right to do what he does, and to me that is rich in ambiguity and humanity. Antonio has this gay relationship with Bassanio that is quite obviously there if you read the text of this play. You hate Antonio for spitting at Shylock but you feel so sorry for him in his loneliness. All these things are very modern and they really have nothing to do with Anti-Semitism. The play is about cultures that dont understand each other. We had a guy in London who stood up the other week and said Im a Muslim and I totally identified with Shylock.

DRE: How do you personally relate to Shakespeare?

MR: I personally feel the following. I think that Shakespeare is often treated as a dead text. Everyone is terrified of it. People in the 16th century did not speak in Iambic Pentameter either. There were a lot of people that couldnt read and write so they used to go to the theater to have a good time. They were confronted by a lot of verse and that kept them going. Shakespeare was a businessman and he made a lot of money from people going to the theater. What kept them going was the story. People would get completely and totally hooked in what was going on in the story. I wanted people to understand the story and get involved with the characters. I wanted people to sit there and after five minutes, forget theyre at Shakespeare and are just at a movie.

DRE: What was it like working with Asia Argento on B. Monkey?

MR: Shes an interesting young lady. I love her to bits but she is one crazy girl.

DRE: How does that craziness translate in the camera?

MR: She is that person that you see. She has more tattoos on her body than I have seen on anyone else. She is amazing, with a rough life and shes run with all sorts of things in her life but shes very bright. She wrote a book of poetry when she was eight that was published and in Italian culture she is far too intelligent to be that pretty. In Italy if youre pretty, youre done.

DRE: Italy is very important to you because you shot both Merchant of Venice and Il Postino there.

MR: Its not a desire to work in Italy. I never wanted to work there again actually, but it seems to keep happening

DRE: What were the challenges of filming in Venice?

MR: Italy and the Italian way of doing things. I know the language and Ive lived there but their movie industry is like 40 years behind. Its all heavily unionized and ridiculous. In Italy, if you start after five its double time. It just stops movies being made there because you dont have that money anymore. But the most important thing is that Venice is the number one tourist attraction so its full of Japanese. You have to clear them out of the way. The next thing is that its on water so everything takes four times as long. If you want to put up a light, you have to have a pontoon. You want to transport props, you need a barge. If you want to bring the artist in a limo, he has to have a water taxi. Everything is crazy. Shooting on the Rialto Bridge was the worst day of my life. We had three hours to shoot a scene. On one side we had the 16th century and on the other side we had the Venice Regatta with men in blue tights pulling boats at high speed. Then you have to have cops, its a nightmare.

DRE: Most of Shakespeare adaptations have been updating the texts or setting it somewhere else like Taming of the Shrew set in high school.

MR: I hate them. Ill tell you why: Richard III is a Nazi, ok I get it. 30 seconds into I get it. Then what? Im beaten over the head with it for 95 minutes. I dont believe that allows you any subtext. Its all about treating Shakespeare as dead you got to jazz it up. I like West Side Story. They forget about the language, theres great music and its Romeo and Juliet done as a great story. Fine! I like that. But with Baz Luhrmanns film for instance, you can admire it for his revere of filmmaking but you could take Shakespeare out of that and it would be the same movie.

DRE: So updating it isnt saying that Shakespeare is timeless?

MR: No! Do you update Chekhov? No you take it and you say this belongs in late 19th century Russia and thats what it means. Theres a subtext there and the audience can say its still very modern. Humanity has not really changed in 400 years. Someone said to me, do this as a gangster movie set in Chicago. I said if I were doing a gangster movie set in Chicago in the 30s, I wouldnt use this plot because Ive got to explain why girls dress up as boys. I dont think that does anything. Its about people that are afraid to confront whats actually there. Whats there is a real story and its your job to get the audience into it. If you dont believe you can do that then dont do it.

DRE: So if theres one thing youre hoping the audience can take from this, what would it be?

MR: It would be humanity has not changed for 400 years. Were facing the same problems. So heres a guy looking at them and saying this is what happens to cultures that are at each others throats.

DRE: Do you think there will be films 400 years from now that people will think about?

MR: Theyre not the films you think they are. We tend to get grabbed by whats fashionable. Whats new is obviously whats exciting and sometimes whats new is whats great. Theres a Brazilian movie called City of God that I absolutely adore and its done in a very commercial way but its got a real soul to it. I think the movies that will last are the ones with soul. Not the ones that are clever because whats clever now wont be in five years time. Nothing dates faster than special effects. Have you seen Star Wars lately?

DRE: How do you think your adaptation of 1984 has aged?

MR: I dont know if its a classic movie or not. I do know that people seem to still like it. Dont buy the American DVD by the way; theyve done it in full Technicolor. Buy the British one.

DRE: What other adaptations of Shakespeare do you think work?

MR: Its odd because hes not a film director that I particularly admire, but Franco Zefferellis version of The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet. It let me roar with laughter. Its kind of a politically incorrect story but it was wonderful. There are many others I can admire. I can admire Orson Welles Othello because its so poetic but its more about Welles as a filmmaker them him as a storyteller and the same with Polanskis Macbeth. Its beautiful to look at but you dont understand why Macbeth does anything. Shakespeare comes into his plays in the middle of the action and all the backstory is told during the play by various people. So you take the scene of Shylock and Antonio where he spits at him. Now that in Shakespeares play is exposition but you cant do that in film you have to see him spit at Shylock.

DRE: Was your idea about the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio a hard sell at all to your actors?

MR: Not at all. Jeremy, who was very proud about his heterosexuality, would admit that Antonio and Bassanio had actually done it. But we all agree that he was in love with Bassanio. Its the same with the anti-Semitism. You cant treat homosexuality in the 16th century the same way that you treat it now. Ones access to women in that time was very reduced. Women were treated as second class human beings and your deep friendships and your great loves were with other men. If you go to North Africa or Greece or Turkey youll find the relationships with men are very similar.

DRE: How was working with Al Pacino?

MR: Hes a method actor and its not in my tradition to work in that way. Its interesting to watch but the rehearsal process can be painful. I used to come home at night and think, my God are they going to do it that way? Then Id say Al, can you speak a little faster? Hed say, Im just working my way through. Every time Id say something theyd say, were not going to do it like that. How are you going to do it? Can I get a glimpse?

DRE: At what point did that break and they stopped playing and you could see where they were going?

MR: Glimpses of it I saw in rehearsals here in New York but it was really just when we started shooting.

DRE: What was it like having those two actors on the same frame?

MR: It was fabulous because these guys, theres a reason why theyre great actors. They have an intensity which affects everyone around them.

DRE: Will you do Shakespeare again?

MR: Actually I will with Al if this one works. Weve been talking about a number of them. He wants to do King Leer but Im not convinced that is adaptable.

DRE: What is adaptable?

MR: Merchant of Venice.

DRE: What was the first film you remember seeing and what impact did it have on you?

MR: The first film I remember seeing was Shoot the Pianist [released in 1960]. I grew up in the Middle East and I never got to see movies. When I was at school I was allowed to go to the local art cinema and the first ones I saw were these European movies and I saw them long before I saw any Hollywood movies. I was just blown away. It made me fall in love with the cinema right then, and I could tell you the next 30 movies I saw in that order. Maybe not in their order but I can tell you what they were. Like La Dolce Vita and Rocco and his Brothers. I then discovered Hollywood and realized that even in that despised world that some great movies were made.

All throughout the 1980s Michael Radford was an acclaimed director of such films as 1984 and White Mischief. But it wasnt until the multi-Oscar nominated film Il Postino that he truly began to get what he deserved. Recently he has directed what many are considering the best Shakespeare to film adaptation,...

I'm looking forward to seeing this film, partly because I'm curious to see how Shylock is presented (sympathetic vs. total heel) and partly because I had heard about the Antonio/Bassanio gay angle and am interested to see how that's done, and whether it detracts from the film's trueness to the original text or not. I like some of the Shakespeare adaptations that experiment with the texts, like the Richard III w/ Ian McKellan, but I much prefer the films to stay true to the text. Zeffereli's Romeo and Juliet was awesome, and I have also enjoyed several of Kenneth Branagh's films, especially Henry V.

Regardng the anti-semitism of the play, it is anti-Semitic in a modern context - Shylock is basically forced to convert to Christianity, and is really presented as a nasty human being - but in the context of its time, it was probably pretty groundbreaking because you get at least a hint of what Jewish people of the time went through as far as mistreatment, and how someone like Shylock might become embittered against Christians. Shakespeare was ahead of his time in a lot of ways - it's never overt, but you can see strains of an anti-war sentiment, or at least a less deluded outlook toward the reality of war, in Henry V, and King Lear deals with insanity in a way that was a lot more complex and contemplative than most playwrights of his time.